---

By CP

TORONTO -- At least 82 children and teens in the United States have died over the past 12 years playing what's known as "the choking game," the U.S. Centers for Disease Control said yesterday as it urged parents to look for telltale signs their adolescents may be participating in the dangerous fad.

Canadian authorities have also been studying the phenomenon, and have data that show 74 hospitalizations of children who survived the game at least long enough to get to hospital. But not all do.

Sharron Grant's son, Jesse, 12, died in April 2005, after choking on a computer cord. He learned the game he called "black out" at summer camp the previous year.

BRIEF HIGH

His family, which lives near Barrie, Ont., started a website called GASP -- Games Adolescents Shouldn't Play -- to gather statistics and get out the word on dangers of the choking game.

"It just keeps going on like a bad weed," Grant said.

The choking game, which goes by a variety of other names, involves intentionally choking oneself or being choked by someone else to the point where the player is on the verge of or loses consciousness. The lack of oxygen induces a brief state of euphoria or a high.

Grant said GASP has received 38 reports of deaths among Canadian children.

Story:


-- Edited by viper_3kj at 11:09, 2008-02-15